TELEGRAM TO A. V. LUNACHARSKY

21 A

11. Class struggle: sabotage...
they exploit the force of knowledge, which
the wealthy use as a monopoly
against the laboring masses.
This sabotage has already been broken (in its main part).

12. "Go to the people".... "Union of science 
and the workers"...

Lenin delivered a speech at the First All-Russian Congress on Education on August 28, 1918 (see Lenin, Works, vol. XXIII, pp. 197-199). Lenin apparently sketched out the plan for this speech on the eve of it, and possibly on the day of the speech itself.

2208

TELEGRAM TO A. V. LUNACHARSKY

Petrograd.

To Commissar Lunacharsky.

Copy: Moscow, Ostezhenka 53, to Pokrovsky.

18 IX 1918

Today I heard Vinogradov's report on busts and monuments and I am outraged to the depths of my soul; for months nothing is being done; to this day not a single bust has been completed; the disappearance of the Radishchev bust is pure farce. There is no bust of Marx for the street, and nothing has been done for propaganda with inscriptions on the streets. I hereby issue a reprimand for this criminal and negligent attitude and demand that the names of all responsible persons be sent to me for their prosecution in court. Shame on the saboteurs and incompetents.

Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, Lenin.

On July 17 the Council of People's Commissars, after discussion of M. N. Pokrovsky's report "On the erection in Moscow of 50 monuments in the areas of revolutionary and social activity, philosophy, literature, and art," obligated the People's Commissariat of Education "within five days to present to the Council of People's Commissars for approval lists of persons to whom it is proposed to erect monuments," and at the same time the following decree was adopted: "To bring to the attention of the People's Commissariat of Education the desirability of speedily implementing the decree of the Council of People's Commissars on the decoration of streets, public buildings, etc. with inscriptions and quotations" (Minutes of the Council of People's Commissars No. 158 vol. 3, archives of IM EL No. 117071). On July 30 the Council of People's Commissars approved the list of monuments,